“What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team” gives some insight into the working lives of young people. Here are a few excerpts:
When Rozovsky and her Google colleagues encountered the concept of psychological safety in academic papers, it was as if everything suddenly fell into place. One engineer, for instance, had told researchers that his team leader was ‘‘direct and straightforward, which creates a safe space for you to take risks.’’
‘‘We had to get people to establish psychologically safe environments,’’ Rozovsky told me. But it wasn’t clear how to do that. ‘‘People here are really busy,’’ she said. ‘‘We needed clear guidelines.’’
What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no one wants to put on a ‘‘work face’’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel ‘‘psychologically safe,’’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency. Rather, when we start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers and then send emails to our marketing colleagues and then jump on a conference call, we want to know that those people really hear us. We want to know that work is more than just labor.
And thanks to Project Aristotle, she now had a vocabulary for explaining to herself what she was feeling and why it was important. She had graphs and charts telling her that she shouldn’t just let it go. And so she typed a quick response: ‘‘Nothing like a good ‘Ouch!’ to destroy psych safety in the morning.’’ Her teammate replied: ‘‘Just testing your resilience.’’
‘‘That could have been the wrong thing to say to someone else, but he knew it was exactly what I needed to hear,’’ Rozovsky said. ‘‘With one 30-second interaction, we defused the tension.’’ She wanted to be listened to. She wanted her teammate to be sensitive to what she was feeling. ‘‘And I had research telling me that it was O.K. to follow my gut,’’ she said. ‘‘So that’s what I did. The data helped me feel safe enough to do what I thought was right.’’
If employers such as Google are interested in “safe spaces” maybe humanities majors concentrating on “safety” are not wasting their college years.
[I do wonder if the Google employees didn’t fool themselves in concluding that psychological safety led to a high-productivity team. Consider a low-productivity team. If the top managers had full information most of the people on it would be fired. Thus everyone on the team is inherently in an “unsafe” position, from a job security perspective, and sharing information can be dangerous indeed. In a high-productivity team, on the other hand, everyone will be retained and probably promoted regardless of what is said at meetings. To the extent that they did correctly identify correlation, causation may run in the opposite direction!]
Separately, the article opens a window into one of America’s most selective business schools:
Julia Rozovsky wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. She had worked at a consulting firm, but it wasn’t a good match. … She applied to business schools and was accepted by the Yale School of Management. … The members of her case-competition team [fellow students] had a variety of professional experiences: Army officer, researcher at a think tank, director of a health-education nonprofit organization and consultant to a refugee program.
In other words, the only thing missing from this business school team was a member who had experience in an operating business.
What do readers think? Are Google’s profits driven by their search monopoly and their near-monopoly on hiring capable programmers? Or by providing safe spaces?
I would point out that “safe space” has no formal definition, therefore it can be whatever you want it to be. In this description it seems almost the inverse of a university safe space.
I don’t have much confidence in this kind of stuff. Google had for a long time (and maybe still does) a supremely annoying interview process, and then years later discovered it had negative correlation with their productivity metrics.
I like the “no assholes” theory of hiring and team building. Unfortunately its a little hard to quantify. But I’d call it a necessary but not sufficient precondition for a productive team.
I believe managers should offer “positive encouragement” to their employees. For example, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, only 18 IL-2 fighter planes were available in the field and production was slow. Stalin sent a cable to the factory managers:
“YOU HAVE LET DOWN OUR COUNTRY AND OUR RED ARMY. YOU HAVE NOT MANUFACTURED IL-2S UNTIL NOW. THE IL-2 AIRCRAFT ARE NECESSARY FOR OUR RED ARMY NOW, LIKE AIR, LIKE BREAD. … IT IS A MOCKERY OF OUR COUNTRY AND THE RED ARMY. I ASK YOU NOT TO TRY THE GOVERNMENT’S PATIENCE, AND DEMAND THAT YOU MANUFACTURE MORE ILS. I WARN YOU FOR THE LAST TIME. STALIN.
With such “positive encouragement”, the factory got to work and over the course of the war, over 30,000 IL-2s were manufactured.
This is just the kind of “positive encouragement” that the workers at Google need to do their jobs.
A few bad quarters and all the touchy-feely will be tossed out. In Google’s case, their business model so profitable enough they’ll accumulate quite a bit of it before the opportunity arises.
Interesting excerpt from the comments on the NYT site:
Henry Lieberman Cambridge, MA 6 hours ago
Here’s the paradox: Google’s study (correctly) shows that people perform best if they feel psychologically safe. But Google’s obsessively “data driven” culture means: Nobody is ever safe. Every move (even who you eat with in the cafeteria) is tracked, questionnaired, and relentlessly optimized.
@philg: In other words, the only thing missing from this business school team was a member who had experience in an operating business.
Well, it’s certainly not Yale, but none of my classmates at the University of Florida MBA program almost 20 years ago had experience operating a business either. They hoped the MBA would help them get to that point; and isn’t that the purpose of an MBA?
@Anon: I like the “no assholes” theory of hiring
I just expressed this same theory last week to the CFO at my employer after she fired the a-hole Budget Director. I told her, “come on, no more a-holes, we’ve got to work with this person.” The CFO retires in 8 weeks so I don’t think she really cares who, or how unbearable, the next Budget Director is.
Smartest Woman: Looks like you misread OP “experience in an operating business” (working at McDonald’s) to mean “experience operating a business” (being CEO of McDonald’s).
Phil,
Was this post six hundred words of pure sarcasm? I think so.
I wonder whether Ms Rozovsky knows the concept of confirmation bias…
Concerning precious snowflakes, I always tell my students (postgrads, at a non US university) that I will provide them the opportunity to be ‘challenged and learn to operate in conditions they would not consider ideal. Sometimes how you feel is not what matters. Sometimes you must make the best of the situation at hand for what it is, not what you would like it to be. Sometimes you are not at the center of the action, you are just a part of a team. These skills, and skill of dealing with people on their own terms, as opposed than on your own, are pretty valuable, and now is when you are gonna learn them’. Redefining the experience at the beginning massively increases their happiness. It’s not that I don’t care, but if someone is gonna have an attitude or spout bovine fertilizer that’s gonna be me, not them.
I general most of social ‘research’ on working conditions is is basically hearsay and opinions. Your alternative hypothesis to Ms Rozovsky’s, and her inability to test that proves it completely.
@ Jackie #3
What is the source of this apocryphal?
anecdotal? 1941-vintage Stalin pep-talk story?